Presidential Zugzwang

In a recent N.Y. Times column, Thomas B. Edsall described Donald Trump as the black-thumb president for his ability to turn success into failure.  A black thumb is the opposite of a green thumb in gardening where a person kills plants through over care or neglect. My brother Rick Dallas just sent me a German chess term, “zugzwang” that describes a situation where any move you make, makes matters worse.  I like it, our Zugzwang presidency.

In Edsall’s article he mentioned when Trump persuaded FIFA to quash a suspension of U.S. striker Balogun and the U.S. team went on to be humiliated with a 4-1 loss to Belgium.  After the loss, Balogun said that the whole controversy made the team uneasy and got on their nerves.  The article also mentioned the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation that was to cost $1.5 million and last a century.  It ended up costing over $16 million and lasted only a couple of days.

Yes, this has been a presidency wrought with mishaps and misadventures.  The article then quoted Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University as saying:

“Governing via conspiracy theories, personal whim and wish-casting, Trump has taken his place as the most consistently inept president of this century. At home and abroad, in many cabinet and sub-cabinet agencies, the administration’s culture is dominated by incompetence.”

The war with Iran was prominently featured as an example of Trump’s reverse Midas touch.  It seems that the president was quoted 24 times during one three-month period as saying that the Strait of Hormuz was open or controlled by the U.S.  On Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” (April 2, 2025) he announced his tariff program to bring back American manufacturing jobs.  By June of 2026 we had lost 75,000 manufacturing sector jobs.  He turned his DOGE boys loose with a budget scythe to indiscriminately slash jobs and cut government services as part of his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.  The result was an increase in the national debt of $3.3 trillion.

Through a series of threats, intimidation, and financial awards, Donald Trump has maintained a death-grip on the Republican party.  Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the U of Michigan, identified three categories of Trump failures: disasters of mismanagement, disasters by design, and disasters of greed.  Much of what we would define as disasters are just implementations of Trump’s vision for America.  It would seem that his vision is another’s nightmare.  By his vision, whatever is good for his financial well-being will be good for America…, or not…, he doesn’t care.